2017 AI Digest Review

Every week the BootstrapLab’s team curates the most interesting and current articles on Artificial Intelligence. To inspire you in 2018, we wanted to share our 2nd Annual Applied AI Digest Review – a recap of all the major AI news and trends of 2017.

Machine Learning (Theory)

We are clearly not in a steady-state situation. Is this a bubble or a revolution? The answer surely includes a bit of revolution—the fields of vision and speech recognition have been turned over by great empirical successes created by deep neural architectures and more generally machine learning has found plentiful real-world uses. Read more.

Why Diversity in the Artificial Intelligence Sector Is Critical

Artificial intelligence offers limitless potential for the financial industry, but at Fortune‘s MPW International Summit on Tuesday Mastercard vice chairman Ann Cairns also called attention to some of its existential risks. Cairns had recently been in China, where she said it was clear to her that AI was taking off there in a big way—just as it has in Silicon Valley. Read more.

AI at Google: our principles

Machine learning is increasingly moving from hand-designed models to automatically optimized pipelines using tools such as H20, TPOT, and auto-sklearn. These libraries, along with methods such as random search, aim to simplify the model selection and tuning parts of machine learning by finding the best model for a dataset with little to no manual intervention. Read more.

Chatbots Were the Next Big Thing: What Happened?

Chatbots were The Next Big Thing. Our hopes were sky high. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the industry was ripe for a new era of innovation: it was time to start socializing with machines. And why wouldn’t they be? All the road signs pointed towards insane success… Read more.

Real-world AI

Unsure where or how AI applies to your company? The McKinsey Global Institute found more than 400 real-life examples where AI can improve longstanding business challenges. Read more.

Why the Future of Machine Learning is Tiny

When Azeem asked me to give a talk at CogX, he asked me to focus on just a single point that I wanted the audience to take away. A few years ago my priority would have been convincing people that deep learning was a real revolution, not a fad, but there have been enough examples of shipping products that that question seems answered. Read more.

AAI18 Panel – Applied AI in FinTech: Faster, Cheaper, Better?

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. During this session, the panelists discussed AI in finance technology, data privacy and security, interpretability of algorithms and the need for a strong relationship with regulators.

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. The yearly conference organized by BootstrapLabs, a leading Venture Capital firm focused on Applied AI, that brings together over 800 members of the Artificial Intelligence community for a day of incredible speakers and exciting conversations.

Moderator: Ash Fontana, Managing Director, Zetta Venture Partners

Speakers:

Sangeeta Chakraborty, Chief Customer Officer, Ayasdi

Shaunak Khire, Co-Founder and CEO, EmmaAI

Ashish Bansal, Sr. Director – Data Science, Capital One

Xavier Legros, VP – Product Development & Science , Trusted Insight

During this session, the panelists discussed AI in finance technology, data privacy and security, interpretability of algorithms and the need for a strong relationship with regulators.

Some of the key takeaways from the session are:

For AI to deliver value in FinTech, interpretability and explainability are important, you need to be able to prove where your model comes from and have strong documentation.

You need to make sure the right controls and processes are in place to ensure data privacy and security.

Developing a strong relationship with regulatory agencies is key to make sure your model is unbiased and explainable and be able to influence regulators into adopting better, more complicated models.

About Ash Fontana:
Ash joined Zetta Venture Partners – the first venture capital fund focused on intelligent systems – with Mark Gorenberg at the time it launched. Ash is a board member of and lead investor in companies such as Kaggle, Invenia, Clearbit, Tractable and Focal Systems. Before Zetta, Ash started the money side of AngelList, launching online investing, managing $130M over more than 250 funds, creating the first startup ‘index fund’ and more. Ash previously co-founded Topguest, a Founders Fund-backed company that built customer analytics technology.

About Sangeeta Chakraborty:
Sangeeta is the Chief Customer Officer at Ayasdi. Prior to Ayasdi, Sangeeta built multiple professional services practices across a number of successful startups including Digital Fuel (acquired by VMWare), Inquira (acquired by Oracle) and Interwoven. Sangeeta began her career in consulting with Tata, Fujitsu and Vitria.

About Shaunak Khire:
Shaunak Khire, is the co­founder & CEO of Emma/MANSI, an explainable AI for the financial markets. Shaunak started out as a mobile security consultant at British Telecom focusing on vulnerabilities in bluetooth standards. Previously Shaunak was a Board Member of a private equity backed DMP (data management platform), he has also served on the global board of the Mobile Marketing Association. Shaunak was a part of the Clinton Global Initiative tech & poverty alleviation groups and built the MaghaCGI30 Index a social impact index that weighs constituents based on CSR metrics. He is a contributor for TechCrunch and has been on MIT Technology Review’s 35 under 35 list in 2012.

About Ashish Bansal:
Ashish is a Senior Director of Data Science at Capital One. He uses AI/ML to generate insights from vast amounts of data and build interesting B2B, B2C and Enterprise products. He manages a product portfolio of 5+ products. Prior to Capital One, he co-founded GALE Partners and headed the Machine Learning group, building AI/ML based marketing automation products. He helped the company grow from 9 to 120 and setup the India office. Overall, he has over 18 years of experience in the technology industry, along with an MBA from Kellogg School of Management and B Tech from IIT BHU.

About Xavier Legros:
Xavier is the VP of Product and Science at Trusted Insight. He’s responsible for bringing machine learning to the world of alternative asset management – Currently focusing on VC and Credit Markets. He is continuously improving the #1 social network for CIOs and alternative assets managers through Trusted Insight platform website and mobile experiences.

2017 AI Digest Review

Every week the BootstrapLab’s team curates the most interesting and current articles on Artificial Intelligence. To inspire you in 2018, we wanted to share our 2nd Annual Applied AI Digest Review – a recap of all the major AI news and trends of 2017.

AI researchers are halting work on human-like machines

Artificial intelligence researchers, who have seen little recent progress toward the creation of a machine that thinks like a human, have largely halted such work in favor of applying what’s been discovered so far, says a leading AI expert. Read more.

Why thousands of AI researchers are boycotting the new Nature journal

Budding authors face a minefield when it comes to publishing their work. For a large fee, as much as $3,000, they can make their work available to anyone who wants to read it. Or they can avoid the fee and have readers pay the publisher instead. Often it is libraries that foot this bill through expensive annual subscriptions. This is not the lot of wannabe fiction writers, it’s the business of academic publishing. Read more.

Automated Feature Engineering in Python

Machine learning is increasingly moving from hand-designed models to automatically optimized pipelines using tools such as H20, TPOT, and auto-sklearn. These libraries, along with methods such as random search, aim to simplify the model selection and tuning parts of machine learning by finding the best model for a dataset with little to no manual intervention. Read more.

The (holy) ghost in the machine: Catholic thinkers tackle the ethics of artificial intelligence

At first glance, Pope Francis’s January message to a cadre of business and political leaders gathered at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, appeared largely focused on the plight of the poor – a hallmark of his papacy. But it also contained a reference to an unusual topic for a pontiff: artificial intelligence… Read more.

For all the hype, AI still hasn’t impacted the US economy

There’s a suspicious absence of what many economists have expected from the AI boom happening in the US: a lift in productivity, and maybe a catastrophic loss of jobs. Despite all the hype about AI redefining businesses and industries, a new report analyzing AI’s impact on the US economy, published May 29, says it’s still too early to tell what kind of impact the technology might have. Read more.

Bridges and LIDAR

In 1999, when WAP was the future of mobile, the industry group behind SIM cards worked out a way to use the programmable space on a SIM to build a complete WAP browser. This meant that instead of having to wait for consumers to buy new phones with WAP built-in, mobile operators could push a WAP browser onto every phone already in use over the air and get people to start using these services straight away. Read more.

AAI18 Keynote & Fireside Chat – How AI Is Transforming the Media

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. During this session, the panelists discussed the future of AI and the media, how it’ll empower journalists and generate new revenue streams for localized reporting.

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. The yearly conference organized by BootstrapLabs, a leading Venture Capital firm focused on Applied AI, that brings together over 800 members of the Artificial Intelligence community for a day of incredible speakers and exciting conversations.

During this session, the panelists discussed the future of AI and the media, how it’ll empower journalists and generate new revenue streams for localized reporting.

Some of the key takeaways from the session are:

We’re already consuming content that’s generated with Artificial Intelligence like sports and election results. But AI is still limited in terms of content creation, it’ll take another 10 years for AI to write a high school essay.

We need to keep our priorities straight and optimize for the right metrics, optimizing for something like CTR can lead to polarization.

AI will give reporters superpowers, they’ll be able to write stories and leverage data in ways that was impossible without technical skills.

About Alex Salkever:
Alex Salkever is a writer, futurist and technology leader. He is the co-author with Vivek Wadhwa of “The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Can Change the Future”. The book was named as a Finalist in the 2017 McKinsey / Financial Times Book of the Year Competition. He previously served as the Technology Editor at BusinessWeek.com and as a Guest Researcher at the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering. His first book, “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent” was named a Book of the Year by The Economist in 2012. Alex has served as a senior executive at a host of Silicon Valley startups in green technology, data science, open government, and cloud computing. He speaks regularly at industry conferences, universities and schools and to corporations and Boards of Directors.

About Robbie Allen:
Robbie Allen is the CEO of Infinia ML, which helps enterprise organizations implement ML solutions. Previously, he founded and led Automated Insights, whose natural language generation software helped automate content production for The Associated Press, Yahoo!, and others. Robbie has authored or coauthored 10 books and has spoken at multiple conferences including: O’Reilly AI Conference, Strata, SXSW, and the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. He holds two Master’s degrees from MIT and is completing his Ph.D. in CS at UNC-Chapel Hill.

About Gilad Lotan:
Gilad is the Head of Data Science at BuzzFeed where he leads a team that’s tasked with building state of the art analytics and data products to support entertainment, news, business and tech. Previously Gilad led Data Science at beta works, and built data products and Microsoft. Gilad’s work has been covered across a wide range of academic journals and publications, most recently focused on propaganda and bias within algorithmic ranking systems.

Study: Early AI adopters may gain “insurmountable advantage”

A pecking order is evolving in the newest stage of the digital era: aggressive early adopters of artificial intelligence are reporting elevated earnings and may be forming “an insurmountable advantage” over rivals, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. Read more.

Navigating the risks of artificial intelligence and machine learning in low-income countries

On a recent work trip, I found myself in a swanky-but-still-hip office of a private tech firm. I was drinking a freshly frothed cappuccino, eyeing a mini-fridge stocked with local beer and standing amidst a group of hoodie-clad software developers typing away diligently at their laptops against a backdrop of Star Wars and xkcd comic wallpaper. I wasn’t in Silicon Valley: I was in Johannesburg… Read more.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple once had grand aspirations to build its own electric self-driving car and lead the next generation of transportation. Over time, the tech giant’s ambitions ran into reality. So Apple curtailed its original vision, first by focusing on software for self-driving cars and then by working solely on an autonomous shuttle for its own use with employees. Read more.

Automation Will Make Lifelong Learning a Necessary Part of Work

President Emmanuel Macron together with many Silicon Valley CEOs will kick off the VivaTech conference in Paris this week with the aim of showcasing the “good” side of technology. Our research highlights some of those benefits, especially the productivity growth and performance gains that automation and artificial intelligence can bring to the economy — and to society more broadly… Read more.

Tech’s Next Big Wave: Big Data Meets Biology

It Began in December, with CVS’s proposed $69 billion buyout of insurer Aetna. In January, three more corporate behemoths—Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway — said they were forming a joint venture aimed at reducing health care costs and improving outcomes for their combined 1 million or so employees. Then, in March, Cigna said it would buy pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts for more than $50 billion. Read more.

2017 AI Digest Review

Every week the BootstrapLab’s team curates the most interesting and current articles on Artificial Intelligence. To inspire you in 2018, we wanted to share our 2nd Annual Applied AI Digest Review – a recap of all the major AI news and trends of 2017.

AAI18 Panel – Enterprise AI Applications and the Future of Work

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. During this session, the panelists discussed the future of work and how Artificial Intelligence will change workflows, job functions and even our priorities at work.

Last Chance to Register for the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Insiders Series

Less than 10 tickets left for our Applied AI Insiders Series event! We will explore the benefits of interfaces using speech, gestures and even body language, but also share thoughts on some of the biggest challenges facing broader adoption of this technology.

To get us to the next phase in human-computer collaboration, these systems must gather and analyze countless information on users, but how do we ensure privacy and secure that sensitive data?

This event is INVITE ONLY. If you did not receive an invitation you can request one below.

San Francisco Wants to Use Algorithms to Clear Thousands of Marijuana Convictions From the Record

The San Francisco District Attorney’s office is partnering with Code for America to trial a new algorithm to hasten clearing marijuana convictions. California’s landmark Proposition 64 opened the door for people with old marijuana convictions to petition to have the charges removed from their record. The algorithm would automatically review the petitions and associated criminal record. Read more.

Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science will offer a new undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence beginning this fall, providing students with in-depth knowledge of how to transform large amounts of data into actionable decisions. SCS has created the new AI degree, the first offered by a U.S. university, in response to extraordinary technical breakthroughs in AI… Read more.

This Man Is the Godfather the AI Community Wants to Forget

Many of the biggest names in the technology industry are consumed with developing an artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Unlike today’s leading artificial intelligence software, an AGI wouldn’t need flesh-and-blood trainers to figure out how to translate English to Mandarin or spot tumors in an X-ray. Read more.

AI and Compute

We’re releasing an analysis showing that since 2012, the amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially with a 3.5 month-doubling time (by comparison, Moore’s Law had an 18-month doubling period). Since 2012, this metric has grown by more than 300,000x (an 18-month doubling period would yield only a 12x increase). Read more.

AI in the Accounting Big Four – Comparing Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, and EY

Deloitte, EY, PwC and KPMG are among the largest service providers in the accounting industry— collectively referred to as the Big Four. Many of the financial and consulting services offered by these firms – such as advising on investment decisions – involve finding patterns in very large sets of data. This data is often beyond the understanding of a single person… Read more.

Learning machine learning and deep learning is difficult for newbies. As well as deep learning libraries are difficult to understand. I am creating a repository on Github (cheatsheets-ai) with cheat sheets which I collected from different sources. Do visit it and contribute cheat sheets if you have any. Read more.

AAI18 Panel – Enterprise AI Applications and the Future of Work

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. During this session, the panelists discussed the future of work and how Artificial Intelligence will change workflows, job functions and even our priorities at work.

Announcing the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Insiders Series

During our May Applied AI Insiders Series event, we will explore practical ways AI is being applied to different Human/Computer interfaces, moving us beyond touch and closer to how we interact with other humans – using speech, gestures and even body language.

This event is INVITE ONLY. If you did not receive an invitation you can request one below.

Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real-World Tasks Over the Phone

A long-standing goal of human-computer interaction has been to enable people to have a natural conversation with computers, as they would with each other. In recent years, we have witnessed a revolution in the ability of computers to understand and to generate natural speech, especially with the application of deep neural networks. Read more.

10 Promising AI Applications in Health Care

There’s a lot of excitement right now about how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to change health care. And many AI technologies are cropping up to help people streamline administrative and clinical health care processes. According to venture capital firm Rock Health, 121 health AI and machine learning companies raised $2.7 billion in 206 deals between 2011 and 2017. Read more.

Tesla Considered Adding Eye Tracking and Steering-Wheel Sensors to Autopilot System

Long before the fatal crash of a Tesla car in March, some developers of the vehicle’s Autopilot system expressed concern there weren’t enough safeguards to ensure drivers remained attentive, people familiar with the discussions said… Read more.

5 Ways To Ensure AI Unlocks Its Full Potential To Serve Humanity

We’re in a defining moment for the intelligent age. Artificial intelligence will be the great general-purpose technological advance of our time. Born of advances in computing power and an explosion of data, AI will meaningfully impact every major industry, expanding the global economy by trillions of dollars. Read more.

Why It Pays To Be An Early Adopter Of AI

One reason they’re disadvantaging themselves is that AI is a process, not a one-off technology solution. AI applications are only as good as the data that is fed to them over time, and as a result, the true gains, such as higher revenue, lower customer churn and more productive staff, take time to materialize. Read more.

Forget the space race, the AI race is just beginning

The United States and China currently dominate the world of artificial intelligence, but used very different approaches to get there. While the US’s academic system has generated and incubated the research that made today’s AI possible, China’s government has pledged billions in funding and offered the technology its full-throated support. Read more.

AAI18 Keynote – AutoML: The Future of Machine Learning

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. During this session, Alex Holub discussed the future of Machine Learning, Automated Machine Learning and the notion of Master Algorithms.

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. The yearly conference organized by BootstrapLabs, a leading Venture Capital firm focused on Applied AI, that brings together over 800 members of the Artificial Intelligence community for a day of incredible speakers and exciting conversations.

Moderator: Andrew Salzman, Partner, Chasm Group

Speakers:

Igor Jablokov, Founder and CEO, Pryon Inc

Matt Swanson, CEO, Augment

Nisha Talagala, Chief Technology Officer, ParallelM

Sabrina Atienza, Founder, Qurious.io

During this session, the panelists discussed the future of work and how Artificial Intelligence will change workflows, job functions and even our priorities at work.

Some of the key takeaways from the session are:

There’s tremendous opportunity for AI to be leveraged in different organizations and even those implemented to improve a process by 1% in a Fortune 500 Company can have huge impact.

AI will create new types of jobs and add value to augment existing systems rather than fully replace/automate them.

The future of our work will primarily consist of interacting with other humans, strategizing, designing and other creative topics, while the monotonous parts will increasingly see automation.

About Andrew Salzman:
Andrew has enjoyed a distinguished career working with enterprises seeking to transition disruptive technologies into growth businesses. As a member of Chasm Group, he works with cross functional teams to identify their best strategic growth pathways. Andrew served as a senior operating executive over a 25 year career in the US, Europe, and Japan, with CMO roles at Oracle/ Siebel Systems, HP/Compaq, Information Resources, Saba, and Kodak.

About Igor Jablokov:
Igor is founder and CEO of Pryon, a stealth startup in the field of artificial intelligence. He also serves as an EIR for Blackstone NC, an initiative to accelerate the commercialization of academic research. Previously, Igor was founder and CEO of Yap, a VC-backed startup that pioneered cloud-based speech recognition. It was acquired by Amazon to act as the nucleus of AI-related products such as Alexa, Echo, and Fire TV.

About Matt Swanson:
Matt Swanson is the founder and CEO of Augment, a customer experience-driven AI platform, and is responsible for driving the strategic direction and vision of the company. He also serves as the managing partner of Silicon Valley Software Group. Prior to Augment, he co-founded SpeakerText in 2010 and served as its CTO before the company was acquired by CloudFactory. Matt received his M.S. in CS and Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.

About Nisha Talagala:
Nisha Talagala is CTO/VP of Engineering at ParallelM, focusing on Production Machine Learning and Deep Learning. Nisha was previously a Fellow at SanDisk and Fellow/Lead Architect at Fusion-io. Nisha has more than 15 years of expertise in software development and distributed systems. Nisha earned her PhD in Computer Science at UC Berkeley and holds 54 patents in software, distributed systems, storage and related areas.

About Sabrina Atienza:
Sabrina is excited about leveraging the latest technology in new ways to solve massive, deeply entrenched problems. She trained in Computer Science and Physics at UC Berkeley. Prior to Qurious, Sabrina was a software engineer at Tealeaf (acquired by IBM) and software development consultant for tech companies. Her favorite reads are “The Power and the Glory” by Graham Greene and “The Way of Zen” by Alan Watts.

Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing the videos from the sessions from the BootstrapLabs Applied AI Conference 2018. The yearly conference organized by BootstrapLabs, a leading Venture Capital firm focused on Applied AI, that brings together over 800 members of the Artificial Intelligence community for a day of incredible speakers and exciting conversations.

Speaker: Alex Holub, Founder, Vidora

If you want to check out the slides used by the speaker follow this link.

During this session, Alex Holub discussed the future of Machine Learning, Automated Machine Learning and the notion of Master Algorithms.

Some of the key takeaways from the session are:

All machine learning implementations within an organization have to go through 4 fundamental steps: pre-processing, feature cleaning, feature engineering, and modeling.

Metalearning, having the machine learning system learn from the raw data as it goes through the different possibilities of pre-processing, feature cleaning, feature engineering and modeling techniques.

Leveraging Master Algorithms that can deal with raw data and figure out the best path will give everyone access to building these complex machine learning models without having written a single line of code.

About Alex Holub:
Alex is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vidora, a leading ML company working with companies like News Corp, Walmart, and Yahoo! Japan. Prior to co-founding Vidora, Alex was a technical and product management lead at Ooyala. He has published over 15 academic papers and holds numerous patents in the areas of ML, computer vision, and AI. Alex studied artificial intelligence throughout his academic career at Cornell University and during his Ph.D at Caltech.

About Vidora:
Vidora provides a self-service, point and click machine learning platform to some of the largest global companies including News Corp, Walmart, and Yahoo! Japan. Vidora’s technology leverages automated techniques for feature cleaning, feature engineering, and model selection to enable non-technical users to use Machine Learning. Vidora’s founders include graduates and PhDs from Stanford, Berkeley, and Caltech. Learn more about Vidora at https://www.vidora.com/

During Nicolai’s session “AI, Silicon Valley and Malmö!“he shared his unique insights in what is happening within Artificial Intelligence, why it is happening now and what lies ahead. He also provided some guidelines on how business leaders can prepare their organizations for the technology shift.

The business community in Malmö was hungry to learn more about AI and BootstrapLab, the organizers opened up extra tickets and ended up with 500+ registered attendees.

07:07 am is a forum where entrepreneurs meet other entrepreneurs and share knowledge and experience. Each meeting has a theme and hand picked speakers for that particular topic. 07:07 am is also an opportunity to meet Malmö city politicians and civil servants.